


Divination

by smilebackwards



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-18
Updated: 2010-11-18
Packaged: 2017-11-04 02:33:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilebackwards/pseuds/smilebackwards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mars is bright.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Divination

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://regulus-fest.livejournal.com/profile)[**regulus_fest**](http://regulus-fest.livejournal.com/) picture prompt: [you have your future to think of](http://www.maxwangerblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/img_5403copy-1024x682.jpg). Can also be read [here](http://community.livejournal.com/regulus_fest/7466.html#cutid1).

You're creeping out of the Forbidden Forest after the last full moon of autumn when a centaur appears beside you. You trip over your own two feet the way you tripped over the four legs of your stag form when you were first learning to walk. From the ground the centaur looks even taller.

"James Potter," it says calmly, staring up at the canopy of the sky. "Mars is bright tonight."

"Er, what?" you reply, baffled.

"It will only get brighter as it ascends," the centaur murmurs. Its eyes catch on yours, bright and old, frightening. "Choose your allies wisely," it says, turning to run back into the forest, hooves tearing up ground in its wake.

You shiver.

-

The library is dusty and cold. You usually avoid it as best you can. But there is an icy fear clenched around your heart. _Mars is bright tonight._

You search the shelves until you find _Astronomy and Astrology_ by A. Star. You're looking for a quiet corner to hide away in when you see a dark head bent over a thick book. "Sirius," you say, surprised.

The boy looks up from his book. He is not Sirius. The resemblance is uncanny, but the lines of the boy's face are slimmer than Sirius', his eyes are calm grey stones to the frenzied blue of your best friend's. "My brother wouldn't be caught dead in the library," the boy scoffs. "I'm Regulus."

Off-balance, you mean to apologize, back away and find an unoccupied corner, but Regulus raises a hand to brush back his hair and you catch sight of what he's reading. Star maps. You inch closer, intrigued.

"Can I help you with something, Potter?" Regulus drawls.

"You're interested in astronomy, then?" you ask, nodding toward his book.

"It's something of a requirement in my family," Regulus says disinterestedly, tracing Cassiopeia with a fingertip. You think suddenly of how Sirius always knows all the constellations before Astronomy class even starts, the way he spends half the period with his telescope tipped up to look at the moon and still aces every test.

"Do you know what it means if Mars is bright?" you ask.

Regulus' eyes snap up, away from his star map. "Who told you that?"

You shrug unconvincingly. You were always better at charm than lies.

Regulus' eyes are narrowed, but he says quietly, "It's a sign of approaching war," before he gathers up his things and disappears out the door.

-

Winter comes, cold and cruel.

Evans refused your invitation to the Yule Ball, so you spend most of the evening sulking and trying to look effortlessly fantastic in your new dress robes so she'll realize the truly horrible mistake she's made.

So far it's not working.

Rhys Sartan is spinning her around the dance floor, her long red hair flaring out like a halo. She laughs, full and bright, the way she never laughs for you.

Regulus sits down at your table. He looks the epitome of sophisticated in his silver robes, the high collar accenting the sharp sweep of his jaw. "Your date dumped you before you even got to the dance?" he asks cuttingly, tilting his head toward Evans and Rhys.

Evans rests her cheek on Rhys' shoulder.

You press Regulus into a shadowy corner and kiss him.

-

You spend most of the new year sneaking into abandoned classrooms to meet Regulus for a snog.

Sirius and Peter are convinced that you've finally gotten Evans to fall for you, that it's her you're sneaking out to meet at night, because who else could it be? Remus says nothing. You wonder sometimes if he can smell Regulus on you, parchment and ink, the cool stone of the dungeons, instead of Lily's sweet perfume.

Regulus is waiting for you in the Astronomy Tower on the night of the March equinox, one eye pressed to a telescope. He turns when you close the door behind you.

"Mars is bright tonight," Regulus says, looking resigned. He reels you in by the collar of your robes, into a kiss softer than any you've shared. Then he bites your lower lip, hard enough to draw blood, and walks away. His robes are black as night, but there's something bone-white in his pocket.

You think sometimes you might love him, this difficult, solemn-eyed version of Sirius. You don't think so very often.

-

You dream of a muggle wedding. Summer. Lily walks down the church aisle with a handful of pale roses. Her dress is white as bone.

You wake up to Regulus whispering in your ear. “James, James, James.”

"What?" you ask groggily, reaching for the bedside lamp.

Regulus looks pale in the soft gold light. He sneaks a quick glance at Sirius' bed before pulling your bed hangings closed and casting a _silencio._ "James," he says, sounding distant and young. He rolls up his sleeve.

Something in your chest freezes. Without intention, you reach out, run your finger along the snake. Regulus hisses in pain. You remove your hand and turn away. By the time you turn back, Regulus is gone.

-

You spend a long time wondering whether you could forgive Regulus for the mark on his arm. In the end, it doesn't matter.

Two days ago, Evans’ hand brushed against yours and she didn’t jerk away as if it burned. (Perhaps it wasn’t an accident.)

In Divination you see your tea leaves shaping out lilies and bells.

Sirius turns your cup in his hands and says, “Looks more like a bracelet and a toad to me, mate,” before Remus rolls his eyes and takes the cup, flipping through his second-hand copy of the textbook that you and Sirius could have afforded easily, but never bothered to purchase.

Remus doesn’t squint looking into the cup, like he can see the symbols clear as day, no ambiguity. “A chain and a cradle. You’re going get married and have a child,” he says confidently, like this is real magic, like it’s the truth.

Sirius peers into the depths of his own cup. “Oh, look,” he grins, “I get to be godfather!”

Remus picks up Sirius’ cup and considers it, paging toward the back of the book where the symbol meanings go dark⎯betrayal, imprisonment, death⎯but he doesn’t read out Sirius’ fortune. You and Sirius are too busy laughing to really notice.

When you take back your cup, you can see Remus’ chain and cradle more clearly than your own interpretation, though they predict almost the same future. Peter jostles your arm and the tea leaves shift. The chain breaks. You reach for Remus’ book, thumb through to:

> CHAIN: An engagement or wedding; a long, thick chain indicates ties that you wish to undo; a broken one, trouble in store.

That night you dream of bad luck symbols: steeples and scythes, broken swords and razors, keyholes without keys. Regulus stands beside you, draws back his sleeve to show a skull and a snake, and somewhere you hear a child crying, your child.

It isn’t real but that doesn’t mean you don’t wake up gasping.

-

You give Regulus your grandmother’s locket, because it’s all you can give him really, it’s all you have that isn’t going to belong to someone else.

Regulus loops the long, thick silver chain through his fingers, pries open the hinge to find that there’s nothing inside, no tiny portrait, no keepsake memory; empty.

“It’s perfect,” Regulus says, smiling, but he’s looking at it like it has sealed his fate, like this is his defining moment and not the night he was branded with the Dark Lord’s mark.

You feel ashamed, cold, like you’ve paid off a lover with a lump of gold, but spring is thawing outside, and beside the lake Lily’s red hair waves like a beckoning flame. She’ll tuck it up with white flowers on your wedding day. _Move forward,_ you think, _don’t look back,_ there’s nothing there for you, you have your future to think of.

 


End file.
